"Any clue in your book as to how he must have gotten the stone?" asked Dalamar.
Jenna shrugged. "Not really. It was held in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth for thousands of years. But some time ago-the records are sketchy-it was granted to the Speaker of the Sun in Qualinesti, for him to use in combating the forces of the Queen of Darkness. There is no trace of it after that, but no doubt the Dark Knights expropriated it when they occupied Qualinost. Perhaps Kalrakin simply stole it from the knights, or the elves, as the elven realm was falling. Who would know to stop him?"
"He will be hard to defeat with magic," the dark elf noted. "But perhaps we can use uncommon spells to distract him, to get close enough to strike without magic, to slip a dagger between his ribs," he added coldly.
"We might," Jenna said cautiously.
"There must be some way to trick him!" Coryn exclaimed.
"If there is, we'll find it," Dalamar said fiercely, his words having a calming effect on the young woman. "We have much work to do."
"And time is wasting," Jenna added tartly, addressing Coryn. "Here-after you change your robe, put these on." The Red Robe indicated a rack of several leather aprons, sooty and worn. She handed the younger woman a pair of stiff leather gloves and some sort of bowl made out of the same material.
"No, it's a helmet-you don't want to burn your hair off, do you?" explained Jenna, amused at Coryn's obvious confusion. "Put it on and fasten it-I'll attach your face-plate before we open the furnace." She turned to Dalamar. "Bring more coal. The glass is almost melted, but we'll need to keep the heat up while we're working."
The dark elf had already removed his robe, Cory saw, looking trim and muscular in his trousers, boots, and suspenders. Like Jenna and Coryn, he, too, slipped into a leather apron and protective mask.
The leather bowl fit comfortably over Coryn's scalp, with a flap that protected the long dark hair she bound at her nape. Very curious now, Coryn allowed Jenna to attach a stiff visor at her forehead. When it fell into place, she could see out of two small, glass-covered holes; the rest of her face, from the helmet down to her throat, was protected by the barrier.
"Take one of these poles." Jenna said, sounding remarkably confident, Coryn thought, as she offered a long tube to the younger woman.
"This is platinum dust, powdered by dwarven smiths in the mines of Thorbardin," Jenna explained, removing a small vial from one of the many nooks and crannies over her workbench. "I obtained it at some expense years ago-this small bottle alone cost the equivalent of ten thousand pieces of steel. You will need three pinches of it, to start with."
Coryn had been about to reach for the vial; she looked up, startled. "These are such rare ingredients. How can you afford them all?" she asked.
Jenna's lips curled in an expression of wry amusement. "When you have magical powers, you find plenty of ways to get rich." She cast a glance at Dalamar, who was bringing several more buckets of coal to them. "You'll find plenty of ways to get poor, too," she added, with an amused shrug.
Hesitantly, Coryn took three pinches of the grainy, gray-colored powder, and dropped them into a clean bowl. In short order she added the other items as directed by Jenna, including talc, powdered charcoal, some crushed mint leaves, and a few shavings of hardwood. Dalamar, meanwhile, worked on his mixture, so that all of the spells would take shape simultaneously.
Next came the more exotic components: Cory painstakingly counted out twenty-five tiny black specks that, Jenna assured her, were dried bat's eyes. Then she broke apart a blue feather, from some bird called a parrot, and scattered the bits of fluff across the top of the odd-smelling mixture in the bowl. Finally came the tinder, dried bits of scrap purportedly made from seaweed that had been harvested from the bottom of the ocean, and then dried for ten summers in a desert climate.
"That, my dear, cost a sum of diamonds, twice as much,
by weight, as the dried seaweed." She looked at Coryn and actually grinned. She was enjoying herself immensely, Coryn realized. "I actually paid for that."
So was Coryn. "Who sells things like this?"
"I myself did, for a long time-many, too many years. Now that I have closed my shop, there are others-none so knowledgeable, nor with such a complete selection, as I was proud to maintain. I got this from an importer who brought it across the ocean from Kothas. Palanthas has more of such merchants than any other city in the world, though you will find magic-sellers in Sanction, Caergoth, Haven-even in rat-holes like Tarsis."
"Of course there are other ways to gain certain components," Dalamar interjected. "Go out yourself, snare a hundred bats, then dry them in a kiln so carefully that you can remove their eyes, their fur, and their feet, still intact. Takes a bit of learning, and time-but saves you the cost, and dealing with fools."
"I will learn how to do exactly that one day," pledged Cory.
She turned her attention to her glass, which had been heating up all this time. Following instructions, she gathered a medium-sized lump of the molten material on the end of one of the long tubes. Heating it carefully, she watched it soften, and turned the pole quickly to keep the gooey stuff from falling into the furnace. Soon it was soft and malleable.
"Now-we move to the well," said Jenna.
All three smoothly shifted to a depression in the floor where cooling white mists swirled. Coryn spun the pole as fast as she could, watched in amazement as the soft glass swelled into a small, perfect globe. She looked up, questioningly, as Jenna nodded. The Red Robe spoke a word of magic that kindled a spark into each of the three bowls of components.
Immediately, smoke began to churn upward, a thick vapor as pure white as any soft summer cloud. Dense and compact, it roiled and spun over the bowls. Coryn tried to watch the sputtering flames. She knew that she had only seconds to act from the last spark of the flame until the cloud started to disperse. And instinctively she understood what she had to do.
Judging her moment without so much as a glance at the other two wizards, who were busy with their own spell preparations, she exhaled completely and leaned down to touch her lips to the edge of that churning white vapor. Slowly, care-fully, she inhaled through her mouth, drawing that mist into her lungs. She felt no shortness of breath-if anything, the pure white smoke was strangely invigorating. She inhaled for a very long time, until all the smoke was gone.
She started blowing through her pursed lips as she touched the end of the shaft to her mouth. The globe of molten glass hung loosely on the other end. Carefully she puffed, filling the soft globe with smoke, watching as it assumed a spherical shape and began to swell. Coryn felt a wonderful sense of release as the smoke rushed out of her, faster and faster, surging into the soft glass. The globe expanded, the glass pure and thick and clear.
She felt drained; the smoke had exhausted her, her limbs were weak and trembling. But she could not falter now. Cory twisted the pole, breaking the connection to the globe, and then she snatched up the cork Jenna had left nearby. She sealed the glass orb tightly and leaned down to pick it up. It was cool to the touch, and strangely light, almost buoyant. Gingerly, she carried it to the work table, setting it on the third wooden stand. Dalamar and Jenna had already placed their own perfect spheres to either side.
They rested there-three perfect globes of smoke, red and white and black murk swirling in their respective containers.
The clouds were impossibly dense, opaque, yet they gave the impression of massive depth, as if one could look inside them for a great distance. Each was a perfect color: red, black, and white.
Coryn didn't say anything-she was too weak to say anything, as she collapsed into the chair and drew deep breaths. But even through her half-closed eyelids she could see the three globes, and she was proud.